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©CI.A601673 



NOV 24 1920 



>» . „ i 



TJ£T4S 




TO THE READERS 



FROM Memory's duffel bag, with no padding of 
flowery imagination, have these few sketches 
been taken, not for entertainment, because during 
five years France has had no entertaining hours. 
They are bare pen pictures unframed, and they are 
here presented to the reader in the endeavor to 
bring home an appreciation of the true French 
character. The backbone of the French nation is 
its royal peasantry. To know that royalty, it is nec- 
essary to have lived with it, to have beheld its 
unflinching suffering, its uncomplaining sacrifice, 
its devotion, its loyalty, its gratitude, its unwaver- 
ing faith. 

€1 Such a privilege became ours while, we, as 
guests of France, conducted hospitals and dispen- 
saries in the devastation, amongst the homeless 
returning refugees. If we have succeeded in de- 
picting some of the glorious qualities that have 
made the French nation what it is, by showing the 
true nobleman, the peasant of the soil (than whom 
there is no finer, no more appreciative dweller on 
this footstool), our pen has served its purpose. If 
also we have emphasized, ever so slightly, the 

7 



French people's gratitude to America as it was ex- 
pressed to us during fifteen months of medical 
work amongst them, our sad little pictures have 
not been drawn in vain. 



M. Louise Hurrell, M. D. 



Luzancy, France. 





DEDICATED 

TO THE LOYAL MEMBERS 

OF THE 

AMERICAN WOMEN'S HOSPITAL 

UNIT No. 1 

FRANCE 



THESE few sketches have 
been taken from the actual 
lives of the French peasants as 
we found them in our hospital 
work in France, and they are 
presented to the reader in the 
endeavor to but imprint again 
the glory and the worth of these 
people who are the " royalty of 
France." 

L. H. 
Luzancy, France. 



THE DUFFEL BAG 




A s 



S the treasures, one 
by one, are taken out 
of the duffel bag — the 
aviator's glove, the Ger- 
man sword, the peace pla- 
card, the American flag, 
the old French pistol, the hand grenade, the dozen 
other articles — there dawns upon the doctor, with 
perfect understanding, the blissful delight of the 
small boy's first pair of pockets. Of course, the 
duffel bag must have originated in that small 
boy's pockets. 

d. Memory paints a picture, as the aviator's glove 
is taken from the bag, of a cloudless day on the 
banks of the Marne near Charly. An ambulance, 
driven by one of the motor corps of an emergency 
hospital in the neighbourhood, stops suddenly ; the 
chauffeur, a young girl of southern charm and 
beauty, jumps from her seat and in her soft Geor- 
gian accent upbraids " Constance," as she calls her 
car, " for carelessness in the use of her left hind 
foot," for there is a hole in her shoe of no small 
size. With deftness unbelievable, when those 

13 



small hands are considered, the shoe is removed, 
and oblivious utterly of the constantly increasing, 
wondering, admiring crowd of old men, women and 
children, the girl works on; finally she looks up, 
flushed from her labours, laughingly gives a final 
caress to her disgraced " Constance's " new shoe, 
and as she stoops to crank her car, at her feet from 
above her head drops this glove. A flirtation? She 
will never know; it may have fallen by accident, 
but it brought with vividness a realization of the 
ever watchful eyes of our " sky pilots." 
C Beside this German officer's sword in its scab- 
bard, marked by name and number of his regiment, 
imagination places a dwarfed little man of fifty-odd 
years. He was groaning with sciatica and almost 
unable to move when the doctor first saw him. It 
was a joy to see what simple pills accomplished in 
his case and he was soon at work in his wee garden, 
like his vegetables becoming taller every week. He 
was such a curious little man ! Each vegetable had a 
name ; Suzanne was a big fat carrot ; Henri, a little 
bunch of lettuce, while Grandpa, the pride of the 
garden, was a huge cabbage. One day he appeared 
at the hospital and told an astonished nurse that 
he had brought the doctor " Grandpa" for dinner, 
from his small garden, and he had walked with 
his gift. Later he brought the sword and described 
how after emerging from a cellar, where he had 
hidden during the battle, he had found the dead 

14 



officer and taken the prize from him, and he said 
when giving it away, " You must take it, it is all I 
have to give you." In how many selfish lives would 
that statement have been the excuse for keep- 
ing, not giving? 

C Do you see this faded, bedraggled, red, white 
and blue paper? It is the famous peace announce- 
ment. The ruined wall of a church in Soissons dis- 
played it first on that momentous night and the doc- 
tor, searching for the one meagre cake- shop of the 
town, had asked two small boys, babes of about 
five, the direction. Can you get the pathos of the 
eager, " Madam, Madam, the peace " as they dis- 
regarded the question, pointing with tiny fingers to 
the paper? With glistening eyes the doctor said, 
" Let's have a party now " and with a group of 
kiddies that grew and grew she reached the cake- 
shop and bought out the small supply. But the pro- 
cedure was so unusual, the cakes so quite unknown, 
that this one peace party lacked hilarity in that 
land of France. 

C The exploded hand grenade was brought by a 
small lad who, while in the hospital, learned the 
American weakness for souvenirs. The first Sun- 
day of his recovery was celebrated by searching 
Chateau-Thierry neighbourhood for war relics, and 
a much exhausted but triumphant little figure 
arrived in the late afternoon laden with his spoil 
in a piece of gunny sack. He had not forgotten any 

15 



one member of the staff in his gratitude. C. This 
old French pistol has a history indeed. It belong- 
ed to a collector of old fire-arms in Lille. When 
he was mobilized, and ere the Germans enter- 
ed Lille, the soldier's daughter buried in her gar- 
den the collection, some twenty-four fire-arms. She 
announced that her mother was suffering from 
tuberculosis, and her home was avoided by the 
enemy, fully equipped with the knowledge of self- 
protection. One day, after reprimanding her maid 
for misconduct, while the anger of vengeance yet 
burned within the culprit, she reported the buried 
fire-arms to the German authorities. A suspicion of 
the perfidy reaching the young mistress that same 
night, she dug up the treasures, put them in small 
bundles and dropped them into the river. In her 
hurry she missed one revolver. Early the next a. m., 
four German soldiers appeared at her home and 
with long spears probed the ground — the fresh 
earth she explained by the need of cultivating the 
ground, and she had herself begun this task. Can 
you picture her agony for she knew that the river 
held one too few. It was not found by the Boche, 
but with the first spadeful of earth the father over- 
turned after he was demobilized came to light this 
buried pistol. It almost sounds the death shot of the 
brave girl, as it lies here so eloquently mute. 
d. The flag of our country which is among these 
articles is a flag which, although so small, kept a 

16 



large estate untouched by even Germany when in 
1914 her soldiers looted homes south of Chateau- 
Thierry, some twenty miles. It was tacked upon the 
wall in front of the Chateau and the Hun halted 
then as did he four years later in the same vicinity. 
Beloved Old Glory! The real duffel bag that we 
each possess we can not unlock with this key, 
however, for it is a duffel bag of memories that we 
carry back in our consciousness somewhere, and it 
needs no key. 

37 




17 



THE MASS 



LIKE battle-torn banners lie many of the vil- 
/ lages of France in the devastated area, and if 
in any village remains the remnant of a wall, a well, 
or corner, back to that village come those whose 
baby feet years gone by have trodden those debris 
covered streets, and unbelievably soon, in all that 
ruin, again glow the hearth-fires. 
C Having heard that some two hundred families 
had returned to such a village north of Chateau- 
Thierry, it was determined there to begin a dispen- 
sary for the sick and needy. Not far from the village 
is the former platform of Big Bertha, from where 
she made her eloquence so plainly heard in Paris, 
and many of the returned refugees were out on 
that first Sunday, viewing with wonder the huge 
machinery on which the gun rested, and the bit of 
track on which came the ammunition, so cleverly 
camouflaged by fresh trees, placed in holes between 
the ties. Upon inquiry in the village it was found 
that the ladies of the Chateau had returned as soon 
as had the villagers, and seeing the possibility of 
mutual aid, they were called upon in their ruined 
home. No praise too high can be given to these old 

19 



aristocratic families who have gone back to their own 
dismantled estates, suffering all kinds of discom- 
forts in order to help as far as possible the commun- 
ity in which they live, by being in direct touch with 
the people. It has been a privilege to meet such 
people and also to see the privations they are en- 
during in saving their bit of France. This Chateau, 
an imposing one in a beautiful old park, lies in 
ruins. The chatelaine and her daughter are living 
in two rooms of the servants' quarters, an exquisite- 
ly painted screen and beautifully carved writing 
desk speaking of a luxury not consistent with the 
tireless grate and the oiled paper at the windows, 
protection from the cold and rain. There was 
warmth, however, there in the gratitude for the 
proffered help, and a glow in the accomplishment 
that day, through these ladies themselves, of what 
had seemed a wonder indeed to the villagers, 
the celebration of Mass in full form in a tiny chapel 
made from the trunks of trees battered by shot 
and shell. The wonderful old church lay a heap of 
stones only, nothing to distinguish altar from 
entrance. A week before the sacred vessels had 
been unearthed from a wood near-by, buried by 
the Boche for future use, no doubt, but the daugh- 
ter of the manor in driving past a farm one day had 
caught a glint of gold beneath one of the barnyard 
piles. Here it was found that the priest's holy vest- 
ments had been hidden. They were joyfully rescued 

20 



and cleaned. So it was, that the returned refugees 
had that day celebrated the full church service, and 
given thanks for their homes, still theirs in their 
own country. 




21 



TWO PICTURES 




t; 



kWO pictures are here 
given from a doctor's 
daily round of dispensary 
work. One is taken just 
at sunset. The ambulance 
drives down the street 
of the bombed and destroyed village, utter ruin 
everywhere, not one house left with one room 
habitable ; utter desolation and silence. Suddenly 
the ruins of the church appear, the roof, towers, 
walls battered down, but in the chancel with an 
open arch behind showing the beautiful evening 
sky, hangs the Christ, full size, upon the cross, un- 
touched. Unspeakably strange, that figure, in such 
ruin! Can you wonder that the inhabitants believe 
this miracle an omen of France's salvation? Sud- 
denly down the desolate street, smiling a welcome 
for the stranger, strolls a woman in her wooden 
shoes. She is one of the three or four returned ref- 
ugees, and she takes the Doctor into part only of her 
kitchen, all that is left of her home, where she has 
the remnants of a stove, a broken table, a pitcher, 
and some straw to sleep upon. It is still her home and 

23 



she smiles. Oh, these women of France, words 
cannot praise them! Think you the Boche has 
harmed that village ? 

C The other picture is seen in the morning. As the 
ambulance stops at the dispensary door a funeral 
cortege is passing through the streets. A tiny coffin, 
carried by children in white; a long, long line of 
mourners walking in sombre black, relieved here 
and there by a blue uniform. It is the last earthly 
journey of our little Jeanne, and in memory we see 
her wild terror as the mother brought her for a 
consultation one morning. The mother with sorrow- 
ful eyes excused her to us pathetically, explaining 
that it was not we who made little Jeanne cry, but 
our uniforms. Then followed the tale. The mother, 
this little frail girl of seven, and two younger 
children had been prisoners of the Germans for 
two years. During their retreat this summer they, 
with other French women, were marched miles and 
miles to keep the French guns from the Germans. 
One of her children was ill and died in her arms, but 
she was not allowed to stop and walked on for five 
hours carrying her dead, with the two others cling- 
ing to her skirts. Poor little Jeanne died of tubercu- 
lar meningitis, so had no hideous memory with 
which to live year by year. And that woman of 
France, too, smiled. 



24 




THE SCHOOLMASTER 



HE was a patient little schoolmaster and the 
first glimpse of him was when at the door of 
his schoolroom, where sat the rows of black- apron- 
ed, bare-kneed little French boys, he was asked for 
the keys of the dispensary door. He was a good 
friend and never was he seen without again and 
again telling his sorrowing worries over his old 
father and mother, who for four years had been 
prisoners of the Germans, far north in the Ardennes. 
He had had no word of them after the German 
occupation. 

CL A week or so following the Armistice his beaming 
face appeared at the dispensary door, and he said 
that he had that day received a letter from his 
parents who were well and anxious to hear from 
him. His joy was intense as he unfolded the plans 
he had already made to bring them to his home as 
soon as he could reach them. It took some time for 
him to prepare the necessary papers with which to 
travel and enter the territory where lived his 
parents, but at last he was equipped and started. 
C. War having destroyed much of civilization, 
eighteen miles from his native village was the 

25 



nearest approach that the railroad could give him, 
and eagerly he paced off the miles, unmindful of the 
big blisters which the rough stones of the road made 
upon his feet. When at last he stood in the doorway 
of his home, facing his old mother, it was to be told 
that only the day before she had been the sole 
unhappy mourner at the burial of her husband, the 
schoolmaster's loved father. He had had the influ- 
enza ; privations and malnutrition and no medical 
care with him, as with fifty others in one week out 
of that village of a thousand, had made recovery 
impossible and death speedy. 

d, Then came the problem ! How to take the little 
old mother to the son's home. Throughout the 
country-side the Germans had taken all the horses 
and mules, there was absolutely no means of 
conveyance anywhere. The schoolmaster was forc- 
ed to leave her in her plundered home, even the 
cook stove had been taken from her, and walk back 
those eighteen miles to the nearest railroad. 
And so he tells still his worries, how he cannot 
send the mother food, nor clothes, nor fuel. Do the 
horrors of war cease when the fighting finishes ? 




JEAN 




»-fc— »-WW— .} 



I"T may be because he is such a 



little boy, such a homesick little 
boy, that always his bed is the 
first one visited either by doctors 
or nurses. It may also be that 
his loving little ways have much 
endeared him to us, but more 
probably it is the interest in the 
outcome of the case that makes 
little five year old Jean our especial 
pet. He has a seriously pathetic 
face, with big brown eyes, and is a picture indeed 
in the brown and yellow sweater he wears as he 
sits in bed with his tiny plaster legs and plays with 
his blocks or books. He at first spent his days in 
weeping, first because he wanted his mother, 
secondly because he did not want his " leggins," 
as he calls the plaster casts into which his twist- 
ed feet and legs are put after operation. How- 
ever, one day he expressed a desire to have his 
bed placed next to that of an old lady in the 
corner of the ward. We approved his choice and 
the friendship of the little lad, whom we hope to 

27 



soon see well and walking, and the poor old woman, 
nearing her end with a hopelessly incurable malady, 
is a very beautiful one. The nurses carry Jean to a 
bed in the other end of the ward during the day, 
where he is kept amused by the companionship of 
other children; there are the little girl who, passing 
through two attacks of appendicitis with no surgical 
care was operated but just in time a few weeks ago ; 
the boy of eight with an ulcer on his eye, who surely 
thinks his black patch is but a decoration for all the 
good it does him when he is interested in his play, 
and the ever-present three or four children whose 
throats represent past deeds, or future needs. 
C When the active legs of Jean's companions take 
them where his passive ones cannot follow, he 
plaintively begs to go " home " as he calls his bed 
near the little old lady, and passing down the ward 
we hear him whispering to her in his baby French, 
and we rejoice in the comfort each is to the other. 
When he plays alone he builds a house of his blocks 
and always puts therein his tin soldiers, calling them 
his " jolis prisoniers," and that leads us to tell this 
much of his story. His father was a prisoner of the 
Germans nearly four years and had been released 
but one short week when a doctor, on one of her 
dispensary rounds, spied the little boy with the club 
feet playing in a courtyard. She told the parents that 
those twisted feet could be straightened by the 
surgeon and begged that she be allowed to bring 

28 



him to the hospital. Could any praise for this work 
speak louder than the eager, immediate consent of 
those parents ? 




29 



THE LOVERS 




O' 



,__,__ 



^NE day, about a week 
before the great Ar- 
mistice had been signed, 
Andre Calette, a vigorous 
old man of the royal peas- 
ant class of France, sat 
holding his wife's frail hand while he read to her 
with disappointed resignation the letter, which he 
himself had so hungrily consumed and bravely 
accepted, ere stumbling with it over the masses 
of ruined stones and mortars that composed 
his once comfortable home. In the one little 
rudely constructed room neatness and cleanliness 
ruled supreme, and there lay the invalid wife; a 
patient, wasted little figure whose pathetic eyes 
wrung the husband's heart as he read to her the 
cruel news that the son, so eagerly expected, would 
not be home that following week. The soldier ended 
his letter cheerfully with the statement of his firm 
faith in the speedy termination of the war, in the 
recital of a rumour of the approaching armistice, 
and added, as the compensation to him and his 
parents for their mutual disappointment, that " at 

31 



least the allowance of bread for two need not now 
be made to nourish three," making in true Poilu 
style a joke out of even that grim fact. 
d, There was a sorrowful silence following the 
completion of the old man's hard task as his voice 
lingered lovingly over the last messages. Through 
the open doorway the eyes of both looked out upon 
a scene of desolation, the village street a jumbled 
mass of rubbish, at the extreme end of which one 
tower only remained of the beautiful old church, 
called the " Little Cathedral," — at their very door 
an aeroplane, as it fell in all its wreckage. It was 
symbolic of their own poor lives, two daughters 
and a son victims of the war, taken from them 
within a year, their home and property destroyed. 
For the first time, now this afternoon, each secretly 
acknowledged the existence of another approach- 
ing calamity, which each had put aside to be faced 
only after the joyous visit of this remaining soldier 
son. 

C A resolute courage, born of that secret dread, 
had driven, weeks before, the little wife back to her 
desolate home in the devastated village, and now 
that same dread caused in her a sudden decision. 
Was it because she feared that without medical 
help for herself her son would come too late ? The 
old man sat stunned with the letter still in his hands, 
as his wife planned to enter a hospital for care and 
treatment, and tenderly, too, planned how he should 

32 



live without her. Then the sufferer dropped off into 
the sleep of exhaustion, old Andre still sitting by 
her side, benumbed with the heartache within him, 
when a rap aroused him and upon his going to the 
door a passing traveler handed him a second letter. 
This was an official one and contained but two 
short lines, news of the son's death* shot but two 
hours ere the great end, pitifully soon after his 
own message home. 

C The old man sat down again at the bedside, 
looked at his sleeping wife, at the two letters still 
in his hand, the one so full of life, the other so 
full of death, at the ruined home, the wrecked 
aeroplane, the deserted village, the bombed church, 
at the village Calvary with the untouched Christ. 
His friends, home, children, were gone, his wife 
was going, but his country was saved; his sons had 
given their lives for that. The mother was soon to be 
with her boys. His faith lived, so old Andre fought 
his battle. When the wife wakened she saw no 
signs of conflict in her husband's face, and the 
second letter had been put away. 
C A week later, in a tent hospital some fifteen 
miles away, the little lady lay with eyes and smiles 
that radiated day by day expectancy and love, until 
old Andre appeared for his precious visit, and as her 
smile grew brighter, her strength grew fainter. So 
these two played the game, she believing that he 
knew not how fast the end approached, he planning 

33 



for the home-coming of the boy who had preceded 
her; lovers to the last, each forgetting self for the 
other. Then came the day when Andre stood in a 
corner of the wrecked church with his dead ; debris 
round about, altar, choir, dome, saints and pillars 
in an unrecognizable heap, staples in the walls 
where had been stabled but recently the horses of 
the Germans ; but never a more impressive service, 
never a greater dignity or sacredness than at this 
burial of one of the royalty of France. 




34 



LIGHT AND SHADE 

TWO demobilized soldiers returned to Luzancy 
one week and for each was a wonderful fete 
prepared to welcome him. Listen first to the story 
of the one upon whom war's fortune smiled. 
C Not many years before the war, a little lad of 
thirteen found himself with but a single relative in 
the world and she a poor, helpless, paralytic 
grandmother. Love was the only asset of the two, 
but a bank account of that with interest makes a 
fortune, so our boy and his grandmother were not 
poor. The boy worked by the week for farmers near 
by and on Sunday did the cooking, cleaning, wash- 
ing and tilling of the small garden plot belonging to 
the home. The devotion of this boy was the marvel 
of the countryside. He found time to make himself 
a crude wagon in which to wheel the invalid out of 
doors, and in the summer time, ere leaving early 
for his work, used to leave his grandmother, a 
quaint picture amongst her beloved grape vines, 
happy for the day with her growing vegetables 
and flowers. During the long winter days kindly 
neighbours called at regular hours to keep the 
hearth-fires burning. The two were as happy as 

35 



children until there came the call to arms, 
and in France that call has no exception. The 
young man left his grandmother in care of the 
Maire. Then came the evacuation of the town and 
flight of the refugees, and later the return home of 
a grateful handful of villagers, for Luzancy escaped 
destruction. The grandson, wounded slightly sever- 
al times, finished his four years military service and 
he came home that Sunday to his joyful old 
grandmother, with not only the Croix de Guerre 
but all of the honours for bravery that the French 
government could bestow — to resume his former 
life and duties. 

C The other soldier had a sad, sad story and all 
the glory surrounding the blesse can never stop one 
pang of the suffering ahead. 

d. The young man left his wife and baby, answer- 
ing the war call at the same time as did our boy 
from the same village. He was almost immediately 
taken prisoner by the Germans, and his wife and 
her baby laboured in the fields for four years, 
obtaining thirty cents a day upon which to live. The 
prisoner, with others, was put to work at a most 
dangerous task, clearing shells from old battle- 
fields. One day a shell exploded, blowing off both 
legs just below the hips. He lived. He, too, came 
home that Sunday. He formerly had worked in a 
brickery belonging to the Maire who again made 
a place for him where he could earn a few cents a 

36 



day to keep himself occupied. The poor wife was 
worn out and could no longer be counted a wage- 
earner. One of the members of the hospital, from 
a fund entrusted to her care, arranged through the 
Maire to leave a sum of money with which to 
educate and clothe this man's little girl, until she is 
old enough to assume her responsibilities, and it 
is hoped here, as with the boy of thirteen, there 
will be another soldier soul. 




37 



THE TROUSSEAUX 




HIS is the story of the 
trousseaux of two French 
girls, and as the girls told it 
they wept, but their tears were 
not for the loss of the beauti- 
ful bed and table linen, which 
French brides provide not only 
for their own lives' use, but 
also for that of the family which 
they dream will be theirs ; but those tears were 
of gratitude, that through their means many of 
our American boys had had their sufferings eased. 
C It was simply told. They had come to the hos- 
pital for consultation, walking some eighteen kilo- 
metres from a village near Chateau-Thierry, both 
sad eyed, slender girls, just out of their teens. The 
father had been a well-to-do farmer. The sisters 
were engaged to brothers and had their bridal 
chests well filled with linens when the war broke 
out. Both young men were killed early in the con- 
flict. Last year, just before the battle of Belleau 
Woods, when the inhabitants of this village were 
all ordered to evacuate, these people left, driving 

39 



before them three cows and taking what articles 
they could carry in a pillow case. 
C Weeks after they went back to that village, 
utterly destroyed, and began their life again ; 
dwelling in the cellar of their previous home. One 
of the surgeons who had been with the American 
Division at the battle of Belleau Woods, revisiting 
the now famous district, stopped at this village of 
Lucy le Bocage and meeting this family told how, 
being cut off from all surgical supplies, he had found 
these chests of linen more precious to him in his 
hour of need than gold, and had used their contents 
to bandage the wounds of our American soldiers. 
If those who preached a propaganda of French 
lack of appreciation could have seen the real joy 
which those girls expressed, because they had 
been the means of helping even that much the 
glorious American heroes, for some short space at 
least, their tongues would have found silence. 




40 



THE WAIF 



V-/ 




RO S SING the Marne 
at Luzancy any aft- 
ernoon of the first week 
of this May, the travel- 
er's attention would have 
been attracted to a small 
boy in black apron and blue poilu cap with a huge 
bunch of flowers in his belt, lilacs, daisies or forget- 
me-nots as the day offered, sitting in an old punt 
blissfully holding a fishing rod, the radiant face and 
utter content of the little figure, a veritable Izaak 
Walton, giving no suspicion of the pathetic history 
attached to it. It was in the effort to efface some 
horror of the past that one of the doctors had gladly 
purchased the fishing tackle at the small boy's 
request, recognizing the happy solace of the piscat- 
orial art when indulged in by one of its devotees. 
C Ten days before the fishing began, at the close 
of a cold, dark, rainy day, this same little lad had 
entered the village soaked to the skin in his ragged 
clothes, cold, tired and hungry. Sobbing, he asked 
where the hospital of the American women was and 
was brought in by a kind-hearted villager. The 

41 



Waif was taken into the heart of the family, fed, 
bathed and put to bed. He said he was an orphan 
and had walked for three days from Lizy-sur-Ourcq. 
His fatigue lasted for two days, then he told the 
Maire his story. 

C[ He had lived at Beauvais with his parents and a 
seventeen year old sister. When the Germans had 
bombarded this city his family had been evacuated 
to Lizy-sur-Ourcq at which they lived until the 
influenza epidemic of last October, when both the 
father and mother contracted the grippe and died. 
Shortly afterwards the unnatural sister took the 
train for Paris leaving the little brother uncared for 
and crying at the entrance of the station. From that 
time on the French soldiers stationed at Lizy had 
fed the boy, he had slept where he could, and had 
no doubt learned much that was in advance of his 
tender years. With the withdrawal of the troops 
from the town, the Waif was again homeless. 
A pitying woman, whose home had been entirely 
destroyed, faced the boy toward Luzancy telling 
him that there were some American women who 
would care for him. For three days he journeyed, 
continually finding travellers who knew of the 
hospital and could encourage him with the same 
hope, and direct him forward. 

C So the Waif became a part of the staff at Luzan- 
cy, with his desire to be loved and to share his love, 
his haunting fear that made his search for each of 

42 



the staff every half hour, his passion for flowers and 
birds, his bubbling boyish pranks that showed each 
day his return to normal, and above all his happi- 
ness and faith in " Les Americaines." 




43 



BLUETTE 




/^UR patient, little gentle 
V-X child -mother, Olga, had 
passed on into the Greater Life 
but one hour, when the postman 
brought her precious card from 
the soldier-husband, long a 
prisoner of the Germans. The 
card had been written before the 
coming of the wonderful Armis- 
tice. For nearly four years these messages had 
come at intervals, and in these later days we in the 
hospital had been allowed to read many. This one 
began as ever, " My dear Olga and well beloved." 
It continued, " I am contented that you are so well 
taken care of in the hospital. I have not received 
the box you say was sent from home. I am well. 
Give my love to Bluette. Kisses to her and you. 
Your fond husband." 

C Yes, we had taken care of her, we had loved her, 
but we could not keep her until that weary person 
had had one glad smile from the bride who had 
been but his for three short months, ere the world's 
inferno began. Her husband had been captured by 

45 



the Germans almost at once, but he had been al- 
lowed to write at stated times and his few lines 
were priceless to the girl-wife. And to Olga had 
come the wonderful gift of motherhood to console 
her for her lost husband, and when her baby came 
she named her Bluette, remembering ever the 
dearly beloved French uniform of the father. 
C When the baby was about a year old Olga, one 
day, fell from her bicycle and was apparently un- 
harmed. But suddenly, a few months later, she 
found herself unable to stand upon her leg. After 
weeks of helplessness and suffering she was taken 
to a hospital in a distant town where she was fixed 
in a frame for five months. Then came the swift 
advance of the Germans and for days this hospital 
was bombarded. Her people came for her as soon 
as they could. In agony she was put upon a load of 
hay in a two wheeled cart and jogged in terror for 
one whole day, until she again reached her tiny 
immaculate home. 

C It was from there that one of our doctors brought 
her in the early summer to us. Her hip injury 
proved to be a serious one, following a tubercular 
process. She was made comfortable in a mechani- 
cal appliance and lay for four months a sweet, un- 
complaining patient. One pathetic card which we 
read from her husband said he had talked her symp- 
toms over with a fellow prisoner, a doctor, and the 
knowledge which these two gleaned from her long 

46 



description of her case was a wonder to us. C^, One 
day, to surprise Olga, little Bluette was brought 
to her. Calls miles away for dispensary work 
made it possible. Bluette had then over three 
bright years in her book of life and was a rarely 
sweet child. The few hours Olga spent with her 
baby girl were joyful ones. It was always a great 
pleasure to bring to Olga a tiny ribbon or a card for 
her to send to her little daughter, and her apprecia- 
tion of it was most touching. She had slowly 
gained until she was able to knit for a few hours at 
a time, and we had bought her some soldier blue 
yarn with which she was making a muffler for her 
wee Bluette. 

d, Suddenly lung complication appeared and we 
saw that her gain was only an apparent one. As 
soon as the Armistice was signed we hurried to 
her bedside with the news, but it came too late for 
even one minute's joy for Olga. She did not com- 
prehend it, and passed on to the perfect everlast- 
ing peace, leaving to us the sweet memory of her 
patient life. 




47 



THE FARM 




A BEAUTIFUL farm 
for sale ; unusual 
r •;• sight in France where for 

generations land descends 
from son to son. Thus was 
it learned why the old 
gray buildings and far-reaching acres bore that 
sign, somehow a piteous sight for eyes to read in 
this country of age and tradition. 
C There had been an only child, heir to this estate, 
a boy of culture and talent, and the parents had 
with pride seen him procure the highest degrees in 
the College of Agriculture, and begin the practice of 
his learning on the soil. Then the war summons 
came and the boy departed. After ten months there 
came no more news from the battle-fields and the 
trenches from the absent one. Letters were written 
to the War Department, to the Colonel of the regi- 
ment, but he was reported missing, with no details 
of how or where. Years passed. Six weeks ere the 
Armistice was signed the broken-hearted father 
died, worn out with worry and grief. Three weeks 
after the last awful gun had been fired there came 

49 



to this farm a weary old man of twenty- eight, the 
companion of the boy of whom we write. When the 
poor mother heard from him the story of the end, 
when she knew for a certainty that the hope which 
made her see her son alive as a prisoner had been 
a false one, she became a raving maniac. This is 
what was told her. 

C[ Her son had been made a member of the kitchen 
squad that last day of his life, and he with three 
others was passing the meals to the men in the 
trenches under fire. A heavy fog fell upon them. 
They with their kettles of hot soup were lost in it, 
and found themselves in the German trenches. 
Discovering their error they ran back, the Germans 
following. Two were caught immediately, but the 
boy and his friend fought like tigers until the boy, 
stabbed in the back, fell forward, his last words : 
" You cowards, call you this fighting?" The bearer 
of the tale was taken prisoner and had aged full 
thirty years in three, ere he was released. His first 
sad mission was to this unfortunate mother whose 
mental poise was completely upset by the news. 
C[ So, on that farm one reads the simple words, 
" For Sale." 



50 



ROBERT 




H 1 



"E was a frail, underfed, 
anemic boy of seventeen, 
who had been evacuated from a 
town near Chateau-Thierry and 
put to work, or rather we should 
say to overwork, upon a farm 
south of Paris. During the heat 
of one summer's day he was 
found unconscious in the field 
and was eventually brought to the hospital. He had 
typhoid in its severest form and with it a complica- 
ting pneumonia. For weeks and weeks the fever 
raged and finally it was decided that even youth 
could no longer help the doctor. Then one day, upon 
returning from our rounds, we brought to see this 
son the poor father who had taken his family back 
to his desolate home in the bomb -stricken village. 
C The family consisted of fourteen, our patient 
being the eldest. The father told us his tale as we 
drove home in the ambulance, and we wondered 
not that the man wept as he talked, for he was an 
hysterical wreck. An American soldier once told us 
that we need not sympathize with many of our 

51 



refugees, because they waited long after they were 
warned before leaving their homes. How feel you, 
reader, about these people? Call you it an easy 
thing to walk out and leave not only your beloved 
home and belongings, but home and belongings 
that were beloved by your father and his father, 
remembering that these people have ties and loves 
unknown to our new world. Such a man was this, a 
basket weaver, a man worth in cash 100,000 francs, 
who had lived from childhood in the home where 
his father and grandfather had lived before him, 
like him weaving baskets. Remember, too, that for 
months had come the threat of the Germans, but 
for months threats only. When the news came for 
him to evacuate he hesitated, and in that hesitation 
he was caught in a pocket between the attacking 
Huns and the attacked French. He told us how, 
with his three youngest children he was running 
down a field outside the village into a corner of a 
wall, with armed men advancing on all sides, in the 
night, when suddenly a bomb burst at his very 
feet completely burying his children and dazing 
himself. Frantically he dug under it, miracle to tell, 
he found that the three children were uninjured. 
So he escaped, his hesitation and disregard of 
military command costing him much. All this, his 
suffering, the children's hunger, the hardships, his 
mental anguish ere his entire family were united, 
he told us in bursts of tears, and we felt that it 

52 



helped him much to retell the tale to sympathetic 
listeners. 

C[ At the hospital for days we kept him while the 
battle with death was on, feeling that food, a bed, 
and our sympathy did much to balance the man. 
d, Finally the boy began to gain, and the father, 
well content, returned home. Our patient was with 
us many weeks, his proudest possession an Amer- 
ican soldier cap which some one had given him, 
and that pinched face in the khaki will be a sight 
long remembered by the members of our staff. 
Rapidly, after the Armistice, the home of our 
basket-weaver in the village showed improvement, 
and that family, in whom we were so vitally inter- 
ested, were soon beyond the need of help. 




53 



THE SAILOR 



ONE of the most interesting patients that France 
offered to the dispensary doctor was an alert, 
sharp-eyed little man of eighty-three, whose 
beautifully shaped head with its long curly hair 
and its soft beard would have been the adoration 
of an artist of Michael Angelo's time. He was sit- 
ting at the door of his home amongst his beautiful 
dahlias when first he was seen, a picture never to be 
forgotten. When, upon invitation, his house was 
entered, there a treasure trove to make the soul of 
the collector become quite wild with enthusiasm, 
presented itself. Upon the walls were pictures 
rare, wonderful old bits of costly porcelain, bronzes, 
swords, silks, and priceless leather. Throughout 
the room were articles of various rare woods from 
all over the world. Perhaps part of the benefit the 
old man received from the doctor's visit was the 
result of her ecstacy over his beloved possessions, 
because there is healing in kindred souls. 
C He had been educated in France for the priest- 
hood, but before taking Orders had met her 
without whom his life could not be lived, and while 
fighting with his conscience, while yet undecided 

55 



between her and the Church, she had died. Discon- 
solate, he had become a sailor and had spent all of 
the later years of his life on the seas, a sailor with- 
out rank. At the age of seventy he had been forced 
to give up his life on the seas and had come home 
to the land of his father where was the wife he had 
taken unto himself some twenty years previously. 
C The old man complained of dizziness and upon 
inquiry into the cause of it this very unusual occu- 
pation was revealed. Into a big room near the 
window he led the doctor and showed her skein 
upon skein of different shades and colours of fine 
silk thread. Then he produced a portfolio contain- 
ing hundreds of beautiful birds, natives of France, 
Japan and South America; and hundreds of deli- 
cate flowers of these countries, all in nature's 
colours. He told her this was his handiwork done 
with these threads of silk, and showed how with a 
brush and glue these tiny silk threads were made 
into foliage and plumage. The idea and technique 
were most unusual. The close application without 
glasses solved the dizziness. The old man, when 
asked how long he had been doing the work, 
replied, " For the last five years, since gardening 
became too hard for me. I invented this as I had 
to keep occupied and a man must have a hobby or 
grow old." 

C This patient has been labelled one of the world's 
" wise men." 

56 



THE AMMUNITION DUMP 




o 



kNE who doubts the 
indelible results of 
the past four years upon 
the nervous systems of 
the poor French peasant 
inhabitants of the devas- 
tated regions, a result which even their fellow- 
countrymen of happier provinces cannot com- 
prehend, should have been a visitor at Bleran- 
court a short time ago, when for the third time the 
inhabitants of St. Aubin were evacuated because of 
shot and shell. This third time fire only being the 
enemy, we hope no hand of Hun behind the shells 
as in former days. 

C St. Aubin had begun to exist again ; living 
possessions, priceless poultry, rabbits, had once 
again begun to make life happy for the peasants ; a 
school had been started ; day by day life had as- 
sumed a more normal aspect. Poor St. Aubin! It is 
a village composed mainly of old people, women 
and children. We were once told by the Maire that 
only six men, of all who had left the village when 
the call to arms had come, remained after the battles 

57 



were ended. Fortunately, on the day described, 
most of the inhabitants were in the fields when a 
terrible explosion, followed again and again by 
others, told the terror-stricken hearers that the 
ammunition dumps on the outskirts of the village 
were on fire. Into Troisly Loire rushed the madden- 
ed people, their one idea, that of finding caves for 
shelter. For half an hour there came a steady 
stream of people, their flight an indescribable 
picture and one that the two dispensary doctors 
can never forget. Meanwhile, in their beds in the 
hospital at Blerancourt, the patients lay, one after 
the other of the more seriously ill going into col- 
lapse, the others lapsing into perfect despair and 
absolutely disregarding the repeated assurances 
that these were accidental explosions ; all were 
obsessed with the idea that war had begun again 
with another swift advance of the enemy. 
C Meanwhile, hour after hour the explosions 
continued, St. Aubin was entirely cut off and with 
sad hearts all waited to hear of fatalities, of poultry 
and cattle destroyed and St. Aubin again levelled 
to the ground. A soldier on a bicycle stopped at the 
hospital to say that 10,000 gas shells were in the 
dump and to prepare. Nurses and doctors made 
impromptu gas masks for each bedside and wait- 
ed. Then the stream of refugees began to arrive, 
children crying for parents, parents searching for 
children, old women of over eighty carried on 

58 



chairs. As the weeping crowd were being fed 
near the hospital the patients could not be forc- 
ed to believe that this was other than the scene 
enacted before, the world fleeing before the Boche. 
Within the hospital tents many were put to bed, 
but throughout the night the explosions continued ; 
parents came in and out, wild eyed, searching for 
their children, and more than one happy reunion 
took place before our sympathetic eyes, 
d, Entrance to St. Aubin was forbidden, but early 
next day a few daring people secretly sought their 
homes and the wonderful news leaked out that no 
one had been injured, that none of the live stock 
was harmed, and that but one house had been 
destroyed. 

C. For a week the government kept the inhabi- 
tants out of the village while the remainder of the 
shells were being exploded; then with their stout 
hearts these people returned ready for the next 
horror that fate might hold for them. The hour 
before leaving the sheltering tents at Blerancourt 
all the old people, none under eighty years of age, 
celebrated with the Cure, on a rude altar made of 
gasoline containers, a Mass of Thanksgiving for 
their care and protection. How many years of calm 
will it take to erase the years that hold such storms ? 



59 



ST. PAUL OF THE WOODS 




r 



"T was late afternoon 
in the dark winter of 
France's sorrow. Poor 
Paulette Duprey, an old 
peasant woman — whose 
hitherto happy, prosper- 
ous life had been passed in the same house where 
now for forty- eight hours she had drained the 
dregs of deepest misery — with trembling hands 
and reddened eyes was preparing with deftness, 
nevertheless, the evening meal. In her well- 
ordered sitting room a group of German soldiers 
were smoking, drinking, singing. Two days before, 
into this peaceful little village of old men, 
women and children had come the dreaded invad- 
ers, and Paulette 's home was only one of the many 
that had been appropriated; her cellar had been 
emptied of its few remaining bottles of wine in 
spite of tearful protest on the part of the old wom- 
an ; she had been ordered to kill her chickens and 
rabbits, and she had cooked them with sickening 
heartache ; but that day, it seemed to Paulette, 
that the very acme of human endurance had been 

61 



reached, when she had watched hour by hour the 
soldiers sawing down the orchards of the vil- 
lage. She had seen her trees, nineteen in number, 
planted by her ancestors, pride of the village, fall 
one by one, and she herself yet lived. 
C Poor Paulette, there was yet more to suffer. As 
she and Jean had slept on the kitchen floor, the 
Germans having taken their bed, they had said, 
" but we have each other" little dreaming it was 
the last night for even that. 

€1 Paulette, peeling the carrots for the soup as 
ordered by her captor now and then peered down 
the road anxiously for Jean. He was one of the 
village fathers and with the Maire and Cure had 
been called to appear before the German staff. 
Finally the old man appeared, greeted by a jeering 
shout of laughter from the half- drunken soldiers, 
who pulled off his worn corduroy jacket and kicked 
into the road his muddy sabots which, as usual, he 
had left on the stone step. The old man with a 
grave and troubled face told his wife to hastily dress 
and accompany him, as the order had been given 
that all the inhabitants were to assemble in the vil- 
lage square at three o'clock to answer to roll call ; 
that no one was exempt, old, sick, infants, all must 
answer in person. 

€[ Without his coat Jean and Paulette in their 
wooden sabots trudged down the road to the square 
stopping now and then to sob at the sight of the 

62 



fallen trees, stopping at the village Calvary in its 
setting of sombre yew trees to cross themselves 
and whisper a prayer. 

C It was dusk when all had assembled in the 
square at the foot of the hill, on whose summit was 
the church where each had been baptized, or con- 
firmed, or married, and it was a terrified group 
that waited with strained white faces, no one miss- 
ing, not even the three day old mother nor her 
child. There, too, were crippled old men, women 
feebly resting on their canes, in all, some pathetic 
two hundred and fifty souls. Then the German 
officers appeared and the roll call began. As each 
answered, he or she was assigned to the right or 
the left side of the square and soon it was seen 
that on the one side were the very young children, 
the very old and the sick, while on the other were 
those who showed even the least robustness. So it 
was when Jean's name was called and the rugged 
old man stepped forward, despite his seventy odd 
years he was separated from Paulette and was 
one of the hundred and twenty-three whom the 
Germans deemed capable of hard labor. 
C When the two groups were completed German 
guards appeared, and, without allowing the select- 
ed workers even one last farewell, marched them 
before them in the rain and mud. Paulette's last 
sight of Jean was as he passed her with arms ex- 
tended toward her. 

63 



C For hours these prisoners marched forward, 
finally reaching a camp where they were interned 
for three days, housed in impossible degradation, 
then Jean with some of the other men was taken 
far up in the Ardennes. Here he was put to work 
hauling logs for a most wonderful underground 
saw-mill with perfect electrical equipment. After 
months of hard work he injured his back and when 
no longer of use was allowed to leave. After walking 
many days he reached his home just after the 
signing of the Armistice. 

C This time, however, no wife greeted him, for a 
short time after Jean's departure Paulette had been 
forced to spend an entire night on her doorstep 
in the snow and ice, while the Germans caroused 
within. She had died within two days, from expo- 
sure, and as old Jean looked across his ruined 
orchard and back at his wrecked house he said 
reverently, " Thank God, I have no wife." 




64 



THE SYRINGA BLOSSOMS 




A BUNCH of faded syr- 



inga on the doctor's 
table speaks eloquently 
of the gratitude of a poor 
old French peasant. It was 
given with such an apol- 
ogy " because this year's flowers are scarce in the 
devastated regions." The poor, bruised blossoms 
which spent a whole hot day in the dispensary 
ambulance without reviving water, curiously re- 
minded one of the giver. She, poor thing, is 
bravely living in one room, her bed, table and 
stove being her only material possessions ; but, 
as she welcomes her son one knows she still 
possesses that priceless treasure, an undaunted 
spirit, that, amidst all the evidences of pitiable 
cruelty to an old age of over eighty, can look 
beyond it all and smile. 

d It was when opening an abscess in this son's 
hand upon a previous visit that we became acquain- 
ted with the old lady. She is hopelessly crippled 
and the flowers on the table tell to the doctor, who 
knows, the gift of body and spirit that came with 

65 



their gathering ; for a broken hip, sustained four 
years ago, makes moving an agony to the poor 
sufferer. When at the beginning of the war the 
sudden order for evacuation came, in her fright- 
ened hurry she fell and broke her hip. With several 
others she was put into a two wheeled cart, and with 
her poor broken leg dangling from the back of the 
cart, was joggled fifteen kilometres. Then followed 
the months of refugee life, sleeping in barns and 
caves, tortured with the dirt and vermin which 
resulted from the crowded conditions. Now, de- 
spite her affliction, she works daily in her beauti- 
ful garden spot, and only those who have seen the 
tiny French gardens can picture the little squares 
of ground with their rows of vegetables peeping up 
above the surface, saying every day to the mass of 
ruins in the midst of which they lie like bits of 
Japanese pottery, " See the life of this France the 
Germans have not touched." 

C That same spirit shines out to you in the face of 
the ancient peasant woman with the shattered 
body. Can you plant your seed in nobler soil? 




46 



THE CURE 




FOREVER, with his 
blessing and his be- 
loved spirit, shall dwell 
in our memories our own 
little Cure of Luzancy. A 
much crippled victim of 
rheumatism, it was only with severe physical 
suffering, and helped by the sturdy arm of one 
of our workers, he many times answered the 
sudden call, often after midnight, to administer 
spiritual healing when our material medicine had 
failed. There was always the ready, gentle " yes, 
my daughter," in answer to our rap at his door, 
and while we waited and heard his old mother aid- 
ing him into his apparel and grumbling the while 
at the cruel necessity that exposed him more to 
added pains, we knew that his eagerness to res- 
pond to our call was greater than our own. For 
since the separation of Church from State in 
France, many have been the ones who no longer 
respect the teachings of any Church. 
C Our acquaintance was made with him one 
Sunday of our early days, when a doctor having 

67 



been called to a neighbouring town had returned 
with a poor unfortunate girl, dying with a quick 
pneumonia. The tender sympathy of the Cure to 
the sufferer as he administered to her the last 
comforts of the Church touched us, and told us the 
manner of man he was. She, poor wayward child, 
as she gave to him her mother's picture, showed 
how grievously she needed him — not us. Not 
until the Great Peace came upon her the next day, 
did he leave her. 

d. We have a picture of our Cure upon one of the 
feast days for the children of his parish, as he 
stood by the altar, before which knelt the little 
acolytes where were the candles amongst dahlias 
red, and white cosmos, the boys themselves 
with their round red caps and gowns of lace 
looking like larger blossoms. There, however, 
stood the children, and ' twas here the sombre 
note was struck for these little children were 
sufferers for " la Patrie," and black were their 
garments. 

C One treasured memory of our year abroad is 
the beautiful French Midnight Mass celebrated 
that first Christmas after the Great War, in the 
eleventh century church of Luzancy. The old 
French hymns, which for centuries had been sung 
at that same hour, in that same place, again pro- 
claimed a nation's praise and thanksgiving, and 
never had the " Adeste Fidelis " so triumphant a 

68 



sound as when it reverberated from pillar to 
pillar on that night. One day, upon our expressing 
our gratitude to the Cure for his quick response and 
willing, to our many calls upon him, with charm- 
ing courtesy he replied, " I am only walking in 
your footsteps " — praise to us beyond comparison. 
C[ One night during a bad storm an unexpected 
case had been brought to us in a desperate condi- 
tion, and it was decided not to wait until morning 
for the Cure ; one of the members went for him. 
He was unusually infirm that night and leaned 
heavily upon the arm of the young woman who, 
with his robes of office and a lantern in her other 
hand, was guiding him. Suddenly with true Amer- 
ican audacity she exclaimed, " Oh, Monsieur le 
Cure, what would the old ladies of the village say 
about us if they could see us now in this romantic 
midnight walk!" Again shone out his courtesy — 
" Sh! Sh! my daughter; but it is very pleasant." 




69 



THE QUESTION 




FRANCE'S claims of 
indemnity must be 
lowered." Somewhere the 
writer read that sentence, 
and on her journey, that 
day through the devas- 
tation it rang in her mind with jangled degrees 
of injustice, ignorance and inhumanity that refus- 
ed to be silenced. The pity of it is that no matter 
to what heights French indemnity can be piled, it 
can never begin to make reparation. Let us take 
you on a tour with us, and will you agree? 
C Remember, too, that it is not the wrecked 
house, nor the lost homes that excite your pity. It 
is the contact with the returning refugees, the sad 
conversations with the man digging in his garden 
there, or the woman struggling under her load of 
wood, that show you what the ruin is. Here is a 
town of at one time two thousand inhabitants. We 
meet a Frenchman on the outskirts. He tells us 
that twelve people have returned, that his wife 
died while a prisoner, that he is preparing a room 
in his cellar for his mother and his child, that he 

71 



walked fifteen kilometres to bring straw for them 
to sleep on, that he is on his way fifteen kilometres 
again for a few kitchen utensils. As he leaves, with 
true French courtesy, he says, " Ladies, I can offer 
you the freedom of the town. No door but is open 
to you." A little distance in the town, a young 
woman is met and upon asking why she has 
returned to this she replies simply, " Where else 
in the world is there a place for me ? My husband 
and I were born here. Here is our land, all of our 
friends are from here." That is her answer. Two 
walls of her barn still stand and a lean-to has been 
put up against them where she lives. Her husband 
has been killed in the war. Although she has no 
seed for her garden she has spaded up the ground. 
The Maire of the town being dead, she tells us 
pathetically, that she will probably have no seed, 
and when she says good-bye, these are her words, 
with a brave smile, " Next year, perhaps, the gar- 
den will be planted properly." 

C In all of these towns it is curious to see the 
little neatly spaded garden spots, so many times 
the only place of the home. In the next town we 
meet the Maire who is working in the field. Four 
families have returned to this place, but the town 
itself is teeming with Chinamen. There are nine 
hundred of them cleaning ammunition from the 
fields. The Maire takes us into the little hut which 
has been put up for him and courteously offers us a 

72 



chair in his Mairie, taking the stamp to show us 
that such is the place where we are. He tells us 
that unless there are horses sent at once the gar- 
dens of those places will be unable to be planted. 
He himself has lost three sons in the war, and two 
little grandchildren playing in front of the door are 
planting what they call their father's grave. 
f[ So many unexploded hand grenades strew our 
way through the neighbouring village, that it is with 
difficulty we pick our way through the street. Two 
families have returned to this town, one of them 
being the Maire, and in this town the wells still 
contain the poisoned water of the Germans, so 
these two families are obliged to go miles for their 
water supply. They are attempting to put up habi- 
tations for the summer from wood which they are 
dragging from the trenches. 

d. In our next town we met a young lieutenant who 
says his business it is to take the bombs from the 
little gardens ; that it has been made a penalty for 
any one to till the ground until the bombs have been 
removed. In two days he has exploded one hundred 
and fifty. Although a Frenchman from the Southern 
part of France he volunteers this statement, that to 
him it is incomprehensible, the return of the people 
to this land so utterly desolate. 
CL How much indemnity, think you, would be 
required for these four towns alone? A pathetic 
instance was noted by us on our return home. An 

73 



old man, whose work was to repair the road-beds 
so full of holes from the cannonading, moved along 
the road as he worked. A burst shell containing 
water in which was a daffodil and three little prim- 
roses was by his side, the only thing of beauty in 
that day's journey. 




74 



THE SON 



IT was just after the patient had been removed 
from the operating table, where she had had a 
leg amputated, that her history was told. She was 
an old, old lady, living alone in a neighbouring 
town, and the doctor had found her there helpless 
and miserable, suffering the tortures of a hopeless 
gangrene, needing and lacking nursing, cleanli- 
ness and food. She had been an influential woman 
in the town where she resided, but that was before 
the onslaught of the Germans, at the beginning of 
the war. 

d The evacuation of this old lady and her flight 
with the rest of the town's people is told graphically 
in " My Home in the Field of Honour," and during 
the hardships of that flight began the trouble in her 
leg which terminated in its amputation. 
C. She had but just been admitted to the hospi- 
tal when there came the following letter from her 
son who, it was learned, was a doctor in the French 
army. It was so tender in its tone and so touching 
in its filial sympathy that the privilege of knowing 
such a man must be given to others : 
C[ " To the Doctors: I have much consolation and 

75 



tranquillity of mind in feeling that my mother is 
with you. On account of my military obligations it 
is impossible for me to do for my mother what I 
should. My mother lives in a manner I do not 
approve and I am sure her surroundings have 
retarded her recovery. The neighbours are good 
and do all they can, but they are all poor and igno- 
rant of her case. She has had much sorrow, has 
lost many loved ones and this has helped to break 
down her spirit and make her life a deplorable one. 
But it is not my place to reproach her. I come to ask 
your indulgence and patience for my mother be- 
cause she has suffered much. I, myself, am an 
object of charity. My own home has been under 
German dominion since August 29, 1917. It was 
liberated November 6, 1918. I have made an at- 
tempt to go back to my home. I hope to go, but it 
will be only to find ruin and desolation. I am thank- 
ful to you beyond words in my hour of need." 
C So a duty well performed lightened somewhat 
that man's burden. 




76 




THE HEART OF FRANCE SPEAKS TO 
AMERICA ON TOUSSAINT 

v OR the weeping mo- 
thers of America do 
the sorrowing women of 
France a devoted duty 
perform, and let no lone- 
ly woman feel that her 
dear dead lies forgotten in a foreign land. Honored 
everywhere are the American graves, and in trav- 
elling in the devastated region throughout the 
season of flowers rarely does one pass a grave, 
without its touching tribute placed upon it by 
some aching heart with a prayer for that other 
mourner. In the words of Scripture, these women, 
" keep that which is committed to their trust." 
d On All Saints' Day, everywhere, were the rest- 
ing places of American boys covered with France's 
loveliest flowers, for November first in France is 
Memorial Day, and roses, violets and pansies yet 
bloom. 

C In the little village of Luzancy, where was loca- 
ted in a beautiful old chateau an evacuation hos- 
pital for the Americans, a touching tribute was 
given by the townspeople in memory of twelve 

77 



American heroes who lie buried in the park. The 
graves were bordered with boxwood, symbol of 
immortality, and covered with pansies, and as one 
read the names on the disks upon the crosses which 
marked each place, these words come uppermost, 
" I have fought the good fight, I have finished my 
course, I have kept the faith." Would that each 
mother could have had a glimpse of this scene last 
Toussaint! Down the narrow village street between 
walls gray and ancient came the school children, 
dressed in black, but carrying bunches of gay 
flowers and twelve American flags which surround- 
ed four French flags ; the last for the graves of the 
village sons fallen in battle. 

C Back of these marched the Maire of the village 
and the townspeople, some three hundred, all in 
sombre black ; the late autumn sunshine and the 
bright foliage of the trees relieving the gloom. The 
French Flags were placed with flowers in the little 
cemetery of the twelfth century church, and then 
into the park came the little children and the others 
to the resting place of the Americans. Very touching 
was the awe with which the children placed the 
flowers and flags upon the graves, and during the 
speech of the Maire there were few dry eyes — the 
true sympathy of a wonderful people whose grati- 
tude and love for the American race can not be 
bounded. To the people spoke M. Chalamon, the 
Maire : 

78 



C " Custom and tradition require that on All 
Saints' Day we go to the cemeteries to remember 
our dead, and by this memorial service for those 
whom we loved, keep up, even beyond life, the 
memory of family and home. Among the dead there 
are some we loved, the memory of whom is infinite- 
ly dear, sons and brothers who in the full strength 
and tide of life made the supreme sacrifice. Yes, 
those whom we loved, we must love more, those 
who fought on the Marne, the Yser, at Verdun, on 
the Somme and in Champagne, those who fought 
on the battle-fields of France, of the Orient, of 
Italy, surpassing the heroes of history and legend. 
Everywhere did they fight in this world ; on earth, 
in open heaven and on the seas, and they have de- 
fended the cause of right, preparing for humanity 
the reign of law and justice. 

d. " Among these are they who came from the 
other side of the ocean, arriving at the supreme 
moment when, overcome by the craft of the enemy, 
we began to weaken. Do you remember, dear fellow 
citizens, the terrible days of June and July last? Do 
you remember our sorrow and grief, not only of a 
people, a nation, but of a small village like ours 
which had already known invasion and had done 
its duty in four hard years ? One must have lived 
those terrible years, only fourteen kilometres from 
the enemy, constantly under the menace of bom- 
bardment, to know the depth of bitterness. 

79 



{[ " During those terrible days a ray of hope came 
to us, the Americans arrived, full of strength and 
energy, and with their presence our courage was 
renewed. We saw the Americans fight near here 
around Chateau-Thierry, and we saw their strength 
at the Belleau Woods, which stopped the advance 
of the enemy. It was through the arrest of this ad- 
vance that our village is still standing, my dear 
fellow citizens. You must remember that and tell 
that to your children, repeating it so often that 
they will in turn repeat it to their children. 
C. " Twelve of these brave Americans who fought 
so nobly at the Belleau Woods are buried in our 
soil, these here in line, as if on parade; in La 
Ferte there are 313, and in this region there are 
6,000. 

C " Ladies of the American Hospital, when you 
write to your families and to your friends, tell them 
your soldiers are sacred to us, and their graves are 
cared for like those of our own children, tell them 
that when the flower season is here this cemetery 
is transformed into a garden, and every Sunday, 
mothers with their daughters come and pray over 
the graves, thinking of those who lie far from their 
own country. 

€L " Ladies of the American Hospital, completing 
the work of our soldiers, you have come into our 
region, so cruelly tried, to put the science of your 
medicine at the service of our people; you have, 

80 



with the power of organization and rapidity which 
is characteristic of your race, made an admirable 
work of love and devotion which we will never for- 
get. 

d " In the name of the people of our village, and 
also in the name of all the people in this region 
where you exercise your beneficence, I address our 
thanks most sincere, I give you the homage of our 
thoughts and gratitude. 

C " Mesdames, my dear fellow citizens, we have 
arrived at the hour of decision. Fifty- two months 
of perseverance and effort, privations and suffer- 
ings give us today the certainty of victory. We have 
had the will to conquer and Victory has come. She 
spreads over our armies her glorious wings, she 
will recompense us for sacrifices. Soon the night- 
mare will cease, a new reign will begin. War, the 
supreme folly of men, accursed war, will disappear 
forever ! 

d "Arise, dead! The hour you awaited has come! 
Your sacrifice has not been in vain. Women, weep 
no more! Let us all be proud, our sufferings and 
our griefs will cease. Tomorrow will bring us 
victory — tomorrow will bring us peace, joy and 
contentment!" 



81 



THE TRAGEDY 




T 



k O some of us has 
been given the great 
privilege of witnessing the 
reappearance of life and 
aiding the growth of that 
life in the stricken, shat- 
tered villages of pitiful, battered Northern France. 
For weeks of late February and March, we had 
driven through silent piles of ruins, when suddenly 
in the various villages issuing here from a lean-to 
against the wall — there from a door of a cellar — 
were seen little puffs of smoke, evidence of the 
new homes of returned refugees, reminding us of 
the first brave flowers of spring that appear while 
yet the winter snows are cold upon the ground. 
d. Life had begun thus bravely again in one of 
these villages near Soissons, a village in the centre 
of which, untouched, the Saviour on the Cross looks 
mournfully over the valley with its indistinguish- 
able mass of stones, where once were stately 
church, ancient homes and old gray walls. The 
Maire had returned, barracks had been erected for 
the school and several for homes. Reconstruction 

83 



everywhere was beginning, gardens had been 
planted and were being cared for by the returning 
population, tenderly and joyously, and one felt, 
even in the desolation, that marvellous vibration of 
hope, happiness and vitality that has made France 
in the past, and will renew her with incredible rapid- 
ity in the future. This town is fortunate in its Maire 
for he is a man of energy, unconscious paternity, 
above all optimism. His motto is," Look up and not 
down, forward and not backward." We felt only 
sunshine in that village on the occasion of our first 
dispensary visit, and rejoiced. And to this place, 
just as those first rays of hope were peeping over 
the horizon, came tragedy so awful that the poor 
people, accustomed to the tragic for four long 
years, accepted it with no outcry, simply with bow- 
ed heads and sorrowing eyes. 

d Upon one of the hills near the village the ammu- 
nition cleared from the fields was being exploded 
by four Frenchmen from the village and four Ger- 
man prisoners from a squad, whose work it was 
(as dangerous a duty as any given a soldier on the 
field of battle). Just as the pile was completed and 
the fuse not yet lighted, it in some mysterious 
manner exploded, totally exterminating one French- 
man, and one German, killing outright and man- 
gling horribly two Frenchmen and one German, 
badly wounding the remaining Frenchman. Is it 
just coincidence that here, as in many like acci- 

84 



dents connected with the clearing of explosives 
from the fields, we tell this significant fact — two 
German prisoners were unharmed? Never shall be 
forgotten that silent group of men, women and 
children who stood with bowed heads near the 
school that day of our second visit. On the floor of 
the school- room lay the two poor victims, covered 
with sheets, a crucifix and spray of boxwood upon 
each, a lighted candle with a big bunch of peonies 
between them, and upon a bench beside them two 
women in black, equally immobile as the figures 
on the floor, the widows of the dead. It was only 
after the doctor, white to her very lips and strug- 
gling with emotion that almost conquered her, had 
put her arms around the women and in her un- 
known language, but understood sympathy, had 
tried to comfort them, that that heartbreaking calm 
was overcome and the tears came to their relief. 
Each then talked and with both it was the same. 
They had been so happy each to be back with her 
husband, from whom they had been separated for 
over two years, both husbands and wives having 
been prisoners and slaves of the Germans. They 
had begun life again in little barracks with nothing 
but their garden spot and their brave hearts. One 
mother had four children the other had lost hers. 
Their happiness had been so pitifully short! The 
Maire, a father with his people in their grief, told 
us that the young Frenchman whose destruction 

85 



had been so complete was only a lad of twenty, but 
that he had been a tower of moral strength to the 
community, that his desire ever since the return 
home of the villagers had been to be a son to each, 
especially to those whose own had not returned. 
C As we stood with the Maire and his people we 
heard in the far distance the explosions from other 
groups of workers, and we knew that elsewhere 
over all this part of France, ere the land is again 
safe, this same scene will be repeated and repeat- 
ed, and only those behind the scenes, now that the 
great drama is over and Peace drops the cur- 
tain, will know that bleeding France suffers on. 




86 



THE ARMISTICE 

|INNER, which but a moment past had seemed 
almost in our midst, had vanished even be- 
yond thought; the rain had come in torrents, night 
had dropped, and was spelled in deepest black ; 
our car had given one last puff and stopped; our 
pocket flashes had flickered their last feeble rays ; 
our chauffeur, with a tiny candle, had crawled in 
the mud under the car and demanded a string for 
a repair ; the doctor in the dark had taken out 
of her shoe the needed appliance. Could anything 
more dismal be portrayed ? 

C Suddenly down the road in the dark came a 
party of young people with voices which had a note 
of joy such as had not been heard in France for 
long months, and the wonderful news passed that 
the Armistice had been signed. Our very car 
leaped forward at the words and we sped 
homeward hardly believing, but all the villages 
through which we passed were ablaze with light 
and filled with excited people calling to us, from 
the jargon of which we could catch the words, 
" Les Americaines." 
C When we reached our hospital we found that the 

87 



news had preceded us, even in a mysterious way 
reaching our pneumonia ward where were three 
men seriously ill. One young lad, very near the 
end, discussed happily and heartily the glad news, 
and we hoped in vain that it might do for him 
what medicine could not. It meant much to us in 
our little centre here. A husband would be releas- 
ed who had been four years a prisoner ; there a 
dear old father and mother would be no longer un- 
der German rule, and the sick daughter was con- 
tent ; here the mother of a seventeen year old boy 
would be happy, realizing she would be saved the 
lot of other mothers ; there a nurse saw only on 
her chart, Alsace and Lorraine. 
C " It was the Americains, the Americains at 
Chateau-Thierry," Everywhere we heard that 
slogan, and under the trees in our quiet chateau 
grounds our twelve American boys were victor- 
ious. 




88 



THE TREES OF FRANCE 




A" 



,MONG the lovely 
memories of the 
sweet land of France 
always must remain that 
of her trees. The easily 
recognized "grand route" 
with its stately trees, having here and there the 
bunches of mistletoe, will ever bring to mind the 
miles of troops that passed back and forth upon it 
during the five years of war. As the soldiers of "la 
Patrie " fell, so did the trees, victims with them of 
shot and shell. No more pathetic sight meets the 
eye than these maimed blasted trunks that here 
and there remain along the route from Laon and 
Soissons, and along the Chemin des Dames. Some 
are mutilated but bravely trying already to cover 
the wounds with feeble green ; many have been 
absolutely decapitated, and the splintered trunks 
show how surely the bombs struck home ; and 
others, where no sign of injury is apparent, but 
from which all life has gone, tell mutely what the 
poison gases could accomplish. 
CL Everywhere throughout the territory occupied 

89 



by the enemy, trees, of course, were ruthlessly 
felled. One needs but a day's trip through the 
abris along the low hills to see to what use some 
were put; hundreds of rooms fitted with these 
rough timbers made safe and dry and livable quar- 
ters. A prisoner once described an underground 
saw-mill, run by electricity, where he was put to 
work in the Ardennes by the Germans, and to 
which hundreds of noble trees were transported, 
to be transferred into needed wood for war imple- 
ments. It was said that the enemy had several such 
in Northern France. Perhaps this could all be 
called legitimate warfare upon the trees of France. 
At least it is what one might expect where " all is 
fair in war." It is another kind of slaughter that 
should be recorded, and for the reader to under- 
stand the anguish of the peasant over the tragedy, 
he must know the deep love that is in every French- 
man's heart for the " soul of the sod," to quote an 
old man's words. We in profligate America, where 
land and forest and vegetation are abundant, 
where life and home and opportunity are new, 
where we spell " discontent " no more forcefully 
than the Frenchman his content, can never 
know the joy and pride and satisfaction of the 
peasant man and woman in the tiny plot of land 
that to him or her means home. If that plot contains, 
as it usually does, a vine, the man is rich ; if it gives 
life to a fruit tree he is the envy of his fellowmen. 

90 



d, Three generations ago in the arrondissement of 
Laon, in Northern France, after much weighty dis- 
cussion among the smaller farmers, and at con- 
siderable cost, because fruit trees were a luxury 
for the poor, a movement was started of planting 
small orchards, benefitting not themselves, but 
their children possibly, their grandchildren sure- 
ly. In the district many thousand fruit trees thus 
began their lives, and each tree, of each owner, it 
can easily be imagined, was nursed as tenderly as 
any infant. In France there is a law which makes it 
obligatory to replace every tree that falls, whether 
it be by accident or deliberation, and this applies to 
private possessions as well as to those of the govern- 
ment. It can readily be seen that the owners of 
these fruit trees during the last decade have been 
reaping the benefits of their grandparents' fore- 
thought, and also because of the example of the 
forefather, each generation continues to plant trees. 
C There came to the commune of St. Paul, Canton 
of Coucy le Chateau, in this arrondissement of 
Laon, on the twenty-fifth of February, nineteen- 
seventeen the Germans. The village of St. Paul 
aux Bois was occupied by them. It lay in the 
centre of the orchard district. At once the order 
was given for the slaughter and the soldiers in 
pairs with cross-cut saws began their work. The 
work proceeded rapidly, the trees falling in the 
same direction ; during the three days that follow- 

91 



ed, 4,400 fruit trees were felled in that one canton. 
There they lay when the photographs were taken. 
One peasant woman was seen each morning 
wailing over her dead. She had nineteen trees upon 
her generous piece of ground and when seen cried, 
" My house, it can be rebuilt in ten years, but my 
trees, my trees have been growing since my father's 
father's time!" Can there have been any excuse 
for the deliberateness of this act? What restitution 
can be made to this woman, or this woman's 
children, and she is but one of many? 
C[ Against this sad picture stands a brighter one, 
the perfect beauty of the Compiegne Woods, the 
untouched majesty of the Villers Cottarets Forest. 
Let no one think that he knows France, until he has 
felt the awesome sublimity of the woods of Villers 
Cottarets — God's temple it is indeed. And as one 
rides through it and comes suddenly upon that 
little British and French cemetery, the most elo- 
quent of all France's burying places, one suddenly 
realizes that although the aeroplanes circled above 
during the battle, within the dark depths none dared 
to use bombs, because the trees themselves were 
their own protection as they kept the secret of the 
fight from the sky. 

C To know what has been lost to France in the 
Chateau Parks, one needs to have seen these im- 
posing parks in years past. After the Crusades, it 
became the fashion to make them in the form of a 

92 



cross with the wide aisles. Gradually that plan was 
modified until the parks resembled French cathe- 
drals, branches forming the arches overhead ; the 
columns, trees centuries old. Just as the Germans 
destroyed the cathedral at Soissons, at Noyon and 
other cities, so also did they destroy these cathe- 
dral parks, so also did they burn the library of 
Louvain. The same orders that slaughtered fruit 
trees, slaughtered women and children — a consist- 
ency of culture surely! 




93 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



mil 9 

021 545 606 7 



